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Dec. 11, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:48
Ending 'Wokeness' On Campus? Or Another Attack on Free Speech?

Universities have been in the news over the past week with the grilling of Ivy League university presidents over an alleged outbreak of "hate speech" about Israel. Is the new move against "hate speech" a continuation of wokeism or a return to free speech?

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Regulating Wokeism on Campus 00:14:33
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Doing fine.
Great and rare indigo.
Let's do it.
We have to sort out a few things.
You know, that Congress didn't sort that thing out with those hearings and checking out and find out how you control speech on a college campus.
Seems like I think the Congress and the legal system has actually invited those kind of problems rather than solving the problem.
And writing another rule is not going to do it.
But that's been big in the news.
And I was very, very impressed with the interrogation by, I guess, one single congresswoman with the four presidents of the colleges.
And that to me was so impressive because to me it was so much a symbolism on where our colleges are and have been.
And I've talked a lot about colleges, you know, not just since these young people took charge, but when it all started back in the beginning of the last century, you know, in the progressive era.
And I see this as a conclusion.
Now, we have a long way to go to find out what happens, but I think this has done great benefit by showing the ridiculousness of the government influence in our universities.
To me, they had done more harm than I ever dreamed they could do, but I have never thought much of the system.
So this is what we end up with.
I have, for years, warned about and believe that we can narrow this down to the age of wokeism, you know, that they don't like our system.
They don't like our republic.
They don't like liberty.
And they have to promote a government system, which is mostly corporatism.
But then they get into social management.
And I think what we're hearing and seeing today about what's in the university is sort of the social management.
What is the contact?
What can you say?
What is freedom of speech?
And I think since they don't have a sound footing on these issues, it's a mixture of everything.
Good intentions, but just doing things that are making things worse.
So the subject of the Code of Conduct came up, and does that prevent you from saying something that would generate genocide?
They got into all of this thing.
But they follow, they have some rules, though, in dealing with this because they've set up these rules in this last decade.
And they have those two groups of rules.
One is the ESG and the DEI.
And all these rules and regulations, and I think of the one that in recent history that they instituted, they had concern.
People were being taxed.
The men were getting all the sports and the women didn't get any.
So they had to become affirmative action.
We have to help the women.
So there were mandates on there, which, you know, under some circumstances were reasonable.
But all the mandates led to what has happened now, that they were so eager about managing things.
They were going to help women get more sports.
And look, the women have been kicked out.
You know, it's an insult to the women and the way they manage that and making them compete against men.
That doesn't make any sense.
But, you know, the ESG, you know, they have the authority and they want to regulate an environment, the social, and the governance.
And this is just all inclusive of what they think they should do.
But the university is not the only ones that have to follow these rules.
Business people have to.
Everybody's supposed to do it.
And, you know, investments are based on, are you following the rules?
And it's not the rules of the free market.
It's the rules of mismanagement.
But the DEI stuff is also very damaging because they tell you what you have to do.
And they have to be, when they hire somebody, they get a president or whatever, president of a university.
They have to be, you know, an understanding of what equity is all about, treat everybody equity.
And you have to have a diversity.
You have to have, you know, the mixture.
When I look at this picture, I would say there's not a whole lot of diversity there.
And then you have to be inclusive.
Diverse and inclusive, they get all mixed up.
It is so, you know, radically different than a free market and a school system which excludes government, government money, and regulations, but you have a code of ethics and a code of rules that are set by the standard of the community.
And lo and behold, if you check and compare the two, you can find out that those schools that were free of government mismanagement did a lot better.
They weren't in the news this weekend about what their position was on foreign policy.
Yeah, it's been a very interesting week on higher education, but you've talked about it for years.
We've talked about it for a long time.
The decline of speech on campus and with the codes, with the regulation of speech one side or the other.
Let's look at this first clip.
This is essentially what we're talking about now.
This was on Hedge.
Plenty of stories out there about this, but this was on Thursday.
Jews genocide and how the universities were lost.
He says, for decades, our elite institutions and media have treated free speech as increasingly dangerous.
As Alex Berenson highlights in an excellent summary, they have used their power to put topics off limits, especially those that expose racial differences.
Like most evils, censorship mistastes.
Universities now police even the smallest offenses against minority or self-declared marginalized groups.
Now go to the next one.
This has that picture that you like, Dr. Paul, of those university presidents of Ivy League university presidents that are being grilled before Congress.
And the article goes on talking about the rot that's out there on campus.
Last year, Harvard declared misgendering.
That is referring to transgender people by the pronoun of their actual birth gender as a form of abuse.
The year before, Columbia had declared it a fireable defense, a fireable offense.
This attitude, this context, to use a word heard frequently in Tuesday, which is last Tuesday when the hearing took place, is what makes Tuesday's congressional testimony by three presidents of elite American universities so shameful, fraught, and hypocritical.
So this is a cultural rot.
This is a rot that's been going on a long time.
And to a degree, it was exposed in the hearings last week.
But the real question is, what were the motives behind the exposition of this?
Is there any hypocrisy involved?
And what's the way out, I think?
Yes, Ian, you know, they ask the question about who should regulate this because they're talking about speech.
What can you say and what you can't say?
And I think they have an impossible task.
And I've often said this, you know, and I was even thinking about grade school and high school when they might have dressing codes.
Who does it?
You wouldn't have it.
You want to protect civil liberties.
At the same time, you don't want to have people not acting civilized.
So you have to have some rules.
And I struggled with that, and the only thing I could come up with is the entity that's closest to the management, if we have the government, it's the local community, but not the UN or the world or the federal government or the state government even.
And that would be the way to handle this.
But right now, if you're going to control speech, you have to ask what speech should be controlled and how do you do it.
And I don't think it's possible to take all these universities and have a code of conduct.
They might just want to tinker with that.
And I think what we're witnessing now is this tinkering around and government involvement and philosophers' involvement for all these years.
And we think of the deterioration since 1913.
The universities have been the instigators of all this.
But I think what is happening right now is a conclusion of this effort because I make the analogy frequently to economics because in economics, they've been tinkering since the progressive era.
And we still have a monstrous system, and people are just waiting for it to collapse.
And in a way, this is a social thing.
They're waiting for this to collapse, and it will.
But to me, people don't understand the First Amendment.
People have really rights of free speech if you own your property.
If it's just somebody's church or somebody's home, you're not going to have a government agent at the door.
They might try to, especially if you're broadcasting or something.
They want to invade and take care of it.
But they want to come in and regulate that.
But most people understand, no, we don't want the government doing this.
And we don't want the government taking control of the speech in the First Amendment.
But the whole thing is, is that's what they think they should do.
But I think what we should do is just wean ourselves off this absolute dependency on the government.
And I think whoever puts the money in has a say-so, you know, and it's the taxpayers, it's the politicians.
And then they come up with all this wokeism.
And it's just their tool.
I mean, that's an army set up of people who believe in wokeism.
And wokeism is not a nice system.
I think it is contrary to the principles of liberty.
I think it's contrary to common sense.
And it's the last thing that we need.
And yet they're riding a hot horse right now and they're doing well.
But the reason I think this picture, especially that we looked at, I think it's so interesting because they have some sour faces there.
And they do it.
And that system should get some sour faces too.
Because, you know, I've had my kids go to state universities and all.
And I remember one of them coming up and he says, Dad, my teacher that teaches me economics is a declared communist.
So how do you handle that?
When it's government, it's harder to do it.
But if it was in our private school or my home schooling group, I'll tell you what, we have the right and the obligation to regulate it.
And we regulate speech through voluntarism and through property rights.
Yeah, that would be the way.
But, you know, this hearing did expose, you know, the wokeism that runs campus.
But, you know, a lot of people, people that we look up to as free speech absolutists, Glenn Greenwald comes to mind.
They talk a lot about the hypocrisy because a lot of what you've seen on these campuses has been post-October 7th when Israel has started attacking the Palestinians.
And the first thing you saw on a lot of campuses was some serious, serious demonstrations against the attacks, the Israeli attacks, and against and in favor of Palestinians.
And that's what kind of started this whole thing, because you saw it on Harvard, very, very big on Harvard.
And you saw massive protests.
And you didn't, you know, they weren't protests to kill the Israelis.
They were protests for Palestine.
But there's been a lot of people like Greenwald would say there's been hypocrisy among people who were against wokeism because their response to the rise of the protesters on these university campuses has been to demand that they actually restrict more speech or to add criticism of Israel into the basket of things you can't criticize.
Transgender, gays, blacks, what have you, and put that in there.
So I have a couple of things from Greenwald.
I think he's made some good points going against the grain, as he always does, because there was an op-ed in the Washington Post, to fight anti-Semitism on campus, we must restrict speech, was the name of the article.
Now, anyone who knows Glenn Greenwald will know that that is like kryptonite in front of him.
He says, I genuinely appreciate candor in political discourse.
What people say and what they really want and mean, like below.
When people say what they really want and mean, like below, it is clarifying.
The key argument is that there's too much free speech on campus and censorship is needed to curb bigotry and anti-Semitism.
And if you'll just do one more, this is what he means when he says this, because he highlights part of the article.
He says, the cause of censorship and destroying free speech in the U.S. has had one of its greatest moments over the past two weeks.
The attempt to claim that there's an anti-Semitism crisis in the U.S. and that only censorship can fix it has been cheered on by many.
And here's their core argument.
And he highlights a couple of things from that op-ed.
Universities must consider their obligations to broader society as they prepare young people to assume responsibilities.
Privileging free speech on campus relative to other values emphasizes skills that pose the greatest challenge to our democracy and fails to cultivate skills democratic societies most need.
And the third one he highlights, isn't it time for university presidents to rethink the role that open expression and academic freedom play in the educational mission of their institutions?
Three strong arguments saying we have got to restrict speech on campus.
So their answer to wokeism is actually reverse right-wing wokeism.
Biden's Wake-Up Call 00:08:51
Yeah, you know, this works to a degree, but the problem is if you have some people speaking out, but if you don't have the government, just, and I think of the dilemma we had with COVID.
Yeah.
You know, we're speaking out and others spoke out and they were punished because it was the government that was involved.
And that's where the problem comes.
Once they do, now what can they do?
Actually, it wasn't the academicians that helped us out on that.
It was the parents that saw an attack on raising their children and they started to demonstrate and stand up for it.
That's right.
The right to speak out and speak your peace and to demonstrate if there's no violence.
Should they concentrate on that?
But all of a sudden, you know, once violence occurs, then it's back and forth and back and forth.
So somebody broke the rules.
And there are times when both sides are guilty.
But both times, we might be supporting both sides.
That's a big problem because we have an empire.
It's sort of like our kids and our empire are internally fighting each other.
We have to pick it.
It makes it tough, you know.
How can we give money to each side?
Well, we do it.
And why?
Whoa, that's no problem.
We can make money rebuilding those societies we tear up.
The money's endless, yeah.
Well, to finish up on this one, I think, and we'll keep an eye on it, but do that, skip over to the very last Greenwald.
He has a lot of great stuff on this, and he's always, he's just always on, you know, absolutely on point.
And here's his last one.
And he puts up another op-ed in the Washington Post that he recommends people read.
The title of the op-ed is College Presidents Reveal Three Surprise Truths About Free Speech and Anti-Semitism.
And he summarizes them.
Number one, university presidents have been imposing campus censorship.
And that's what you started out by saying, Dr. Paul.
But number two, much of what is now being called genocide advocacy on Israel is clearly within First Amendment speech, Greenwald points out from the article.
And three, and I think we would all agree on this, Dr. Paul, you and I, England, and many others, the only solution is to oppose all censorship.
Yes.
Well, the fight's going to go on.
I also try to emphasize the fact that I do believe that over this past hundred years, systematically and steadily, there's been a coup of the original system.
And that means we don't have a republic and we have undermined those principles.
And we were warned that would happen if you don't have a moral people.
You know, if you have two people that disagree strongly with ideas, but if they want to talk and discuss it, it's just different.
It's sort of, you know, what are the moral standards?
And I think we've lost on that.
And I think we're seeing what happens, you know, with a system where literally the republic has been dissipated.
It's gone.
And you don't have the emphasis on an understanding of the First Amendment.
And then they're always looking for who's going to get the best advantage.
And usually money is involved and power.
And that's our fault.
But I still think there are people waking up.
I think this should be a wake-up call, just like the people sent out a wake-up call about COVID.
And I'm hoping that they never are allowed to march over us with these vaccines again.
But they're trying and they're persisting it.
So that means we should be vigilant.
Vigilant.
That's all we can do.
Well, the last one is more of an update, but it's actually kind of news, which is tomorrow, believe it or not, Dr. Paul, and this is going to shock you.
Guess who's back in town?
Not Santa Claus coming to town.
No, Zelensky.
It's a reverse Santa Claus, right?
Instead of giving you stuff, he takes stuff.
So believe it or not, now we've been talking about this on the show for a while, that the Biden administration is getting desperate.
Last week, I don't know if you saw this, but Tucker Carlson tweeted out that a source of his in Congress told him that in a closed-door meeting, Secretary of Defense Austin told members of Congress, if you don't vote this money for us, we're going to send your kids and your family and your nephews out to fight in this war, a real threat.
And Biden has been essentially saying the same thing.
He said, if Ukraine doesn't win, American troops will be fighting Russia in Europe.
And they've been also talking about the domino theory.
Putin, when he finishes with Ukraine, is going to take over Berlin.
He's going to take over London, Amsterdam.
He's going to town.
He's going to be over here soon.
They've been going full court press to try to get this money.
We've also talked about how Republicans have been so, what's the word for it, hypocritical about it.
They're not against the funding, but hey, we need a little something.
Grease the wheels for us.
We need a little bit of money for the border.
The saddest thing that I come across looking at all this and seeing this activity is that so much harm and killing and waste and suffering and starvation all could be prevented.
You know, it's not like we don't know what doesn't, but there's so much greed in the country where people want to make money on this and they go along with this.
And it to me is such a tragedy.
One tragedy I see that I really am annoyed by is when I see the handicapped veterans coming back.
Oh, yeah.
You know, and I think, you know, they're making it.
They're heroic in them not giving up.
But it's so criminal because how about the people that died, the civilians that died?
The people who are suffering now without their limbs or blinded.
And I thought, it could have all been prevented.
This was not, this didn't fall out of the sky.
We created, people created this monster.
And even the many friends we have, they have disagreements with us of saying, you're right, generally speaking, but on certain occasions, you've got to bend the rules.
You've got to be more pragmatic.
You can't do that.
And they don't do it.
They think non-intervention and allowing people to make up their own mind, there's some shortcomings.
Well, tell you what, these codes that they want to write have a lot of shortcomings.
But the codes that individuals write for themselves will have a few shortcomings.
But it's far better for individuals to write their own codes of conduct and people living in a voluntary society and getting their education from private institutions than to think that they can go and, well, well, I'm going to run for Congress and I'm going to change all this.
You know, they have to be a little more realistic.
Yeah.
Well, here's a bad sign because Zelensky will be here tomorrow.
He's going to go see Biden, talk a little bit with Biden.
But he was invited here by Schumer and McConnell.
Now, McConnell last week, and you can tell he's very deceitful.
Last week he said, there's going to be no money for Ukraine.
I'm not going to vote for any money for Ukraine without the border.
Lindsey Graham said the same thing.
The two biggest champions of Ukraine money were pretending that they were against it.
But the bad sign is that Mike Johnson, the speaker, is going to have a private meeting with Zelensky.
He's not going to be telling him no money.
He's going to be telling him, how can I sell this?
You know, the whole reason they got rid of McCarthy is because McCarthy wouldn't take the money for Ukraine out of the CR, number one.
And number two, the main one, according to Gates, who led the revolt, was that McCarthy was willing to work with Dems to pass the money for Ukraine.
And it looks like Mike Johnson is simply a younger version of Kevin McCarthy on this.
So I think it's a big deal.
This money is a big deal.
All the mainstream outlets in the U.S. and Europe are saying Ukraine has no chance of winning, zero chance, even the ones that were champions of the war, Develt, we talked about it last week, no chance of winning.
Biden has not come to Congress and said, here's how Ukraine can win.
Here's how the 60 billion will result in a victory.
It's good money spent.
None of that will happen.
The only thing they can say is it's a jobs program and Putin is coming to town if we don't do it.
So, I mean, we don't often tell people to call their congressmen, but if I would say, Dr. Paul, I mean, just for me, if your congressman doesn't know that you're opposed to sending another $60 billion to Ukraine, he or she needs to know in a polite note why you think it's a bad idea to vote for it.
Ukraine Funding Frustration 00:03:10
You know, most everything is a consequence of ideas and philosophy and the acceptance of this to some degree.
But what we see here today and the people you were talking about, and the people I knew in Congress, they were all educated in this system.
Maybe not the fanciest universities, but the atmosphere has been similar, you know.
And it's just a few.
There's a handful, but there are some good universities that try to buck this, and there's some good homeschooling programs that try to buck this, but that doesn't do the whole thing.
But this is a reflection.
The people that he's dealing with, you think, well, they said this, but I needed that in order to get in a position and really help change things for the better.
No, I can't do everything.
But if I could just get in office, I could move the needle a little bit.
So if you didn't notice, I didn't accept that philosophy at all.
No.
No, it didn't work.
Matter of fact, I came to the conclusion that, you know, as far as influencing people, you know, the softer approach and being principled on it gains more favor than to, oh, he's just, you know, he's just another one of those.
You know, you know, a guy like Gates, he's controversial.
But one thing is, is so far, you know, he's pretty steady and he works hard to try to be and stick to what he has preached.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Well, I'm all done, Dr. Paul.
The last thing I would say on this Monday is thanks for watching the program.
It's Christmas season.
I know you're out there doing your shopping, but we appreciate you giving us a half hour of your day.
Very good.
And I, too, want to thank our viewers for tuning in.
And there's a lot of excitement going on, and it'll continue.
They will not solve the problem in the universities.
That's a big one.
But I think there's cracks in the wall, and people are questioning the validity of the system of education that we've been putting up with.
And I think that's good.
But the foreign policy is tremendous to solve that problem.
And Daniel points out very well that people are going to pursue it.
And Zelensky's here.
It's just too bad if they cave and start giving that money.
And I'm afraid they will because they have so many ways of doing this and punishing the people who won't go along.
And that's what happened.
So they will probably find some way.
And it might be, like I mentioned the other day, they might do it in a secretive way.
Who knows what they'll do?
But the frustration is not just with a few of us in this country who are sick and tired of it, but it's creeping around.
And there's some Europeans that are getting a little annoyed with it.
But there's also stories out that, you know, Europeans, you know, you're the ones that are most vulnerable.
You know, Russia's coming to get you.
You know, it'll be scaremongering there.
And then there'll be more pressure put on it.
So we want to thank everybody once again for helping us along.
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